[Prompt] Moral Decisions

Lore World's End Tavern: Role-play and Fan Fiction
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((This prompt is both difficult and easy depending on the character. Myself, I find it a very difficult prompt to answer personally. However some of my characters have a very easy time answering it. I am curious how characters would react to such a situation. You can have this be as cut and dry or as interesting as you want. Magic and abilities or none at all. Personally, I would rather you not just write out the situation and win completely and utterly, but some characters have abilities that would allow that. Some characters may be the ones who set the entire scenario up to begin with, looking at you Kersia! Assume those that are trapped are abilityless. As always, there is no right or wrong answer.))

Whether you are a hero or a villain, or not on that spectrum at all, you’ve found yourself facing an interesting dilemma. A train of sorts is running full steam down its tracks, oblivious to the issues ahead. You are at a switch to determine which rail the train will take.

For some reason, there is a person trapped on one set of tracks and five people trapped on the other. Should you do nothing, the train will go through the five people. However, should you pull the switch, the train will shift and go through the single person. Those on the tracks can see you at the switch, and you can see them. You have only moments to decide your course of action. What do you do?

Does your decision shift, should you only be able to see the group of five, but be aware of the single person? Or vise versa? What if the five are the opposite faction of you, and the single shares your faction? Does the race change your decision? If you used abilities within the scenario, what would you do should you have been unable?

Regardless, how do the resulting consequences impact you?

Info

This is meant to be a fun exercise, so there aren’t many rules.

Prompts are fun little things meant to inspire. You don’t have to perfectly match the prompt. Just let it inspire a thought.

I’m going to try and post these weekly, sometime between Saturday and Monday probably. Feedback and prompt ideas are welcome, so feel free to post them in the archive thread. Some prompts will be more thought provoking, some more whimsical. Respect your fellow writers.

Disclaimer: I cannot take full credit for every prompt. Some of these I create on my own, some are prompts I’ve seen that I’ve taken a WoW spin to, and some I’ve seen and used in the past, some are ideas spoken in passing between me and coworkers, or guildmates, or some are offered directly from folks on the forums. If I’ve been directly given a prompt from another person, I will credit them unless they do not want to. Otherwise, know some of these are gained through many means.

Archive: Kersia's Prompt Archive and Discussion

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Greetings… I haven’t done one of these since I fed razor blades to the small children of Orgrimmar… Indeed for some this question might be hard but not for a being such as me… You see my ways of choosing are do very simple… I am a man of contracts, so long as I have no contractual obligations to rescue any of these poor unfortunate souls, I am free to pursue the next phase of such decision making…

Which one of these six souls will benefit me the most? It could just be a normal trick of mine, but five souls usually have more potential than one… Sure derailing a simple mortal construct like a train would be child’s play as would raising the one killed from the dead, but that requires caring about the souls before me… To each of the five I will offer the same contract. Serve me, I shall see what you see, hear what you hear, know what you know, I shall be the whisper in your ear… In exchange you shall avoid the death before you, break my contract and feel what fate had planned if one had not interfered… With that five more contracts are made and done poor fool dead…

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I play a very dark chaotic warlock so it doesn’t truly matter… my warlock is going to steal all there souls regardless.
truly she will pick the track with 1 person. mainly to preserve her robes from getting stained.

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No story on this one. I think it feels a little bit contrived for the Warcraft universe because the prevalence of magic could negate the dilemma entirely. Not that I don’t appreciate the prompt itself, it’s just that I’m finding it difficult to conjure up a setting, supporting characters, reasons for the situation, etc.

That said, the priestess would seek to eliminate the dilemma by derailing the train. In the time that it would take to travel to the switch and activate it before the train got to the junction, incantations could be made which would force the train off the rails. Trains are top-heavy, so a burst of energy at the top would knock it off balance, and a well-timed second burst from underneath during this time would finish the job.

Should the attempt fail, or there not be enough time to react, she would bare witness to the gruesome hand of fate and ultimately chalk it up to destiny. Regardless of where the switch was at, her action was always going to be to try to derail the train; bearing host to both the Void’s whispers and the Light’s command, combined with her own occasional haughty selfishness, has granted her a rather unique view of predestination vs free will.

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It was a morality riddle Raya had been told many times in her long life, each instance thematically different, but always the same point. She had killed others, even her friends to save her own life. More times than she could count she had killed enemies to save allies, but never had she entertained the idea of having to answer the question. Now the aftermath of the answer lay before her,

With her hand hovering inches from the switch, her mind raced about all the possibilities that could have changed the outcome. There had been time for fire magic to derail the train, but there was no telling how many people were on the train that would have perished from its crash. Nor would it have guaranteed that the trains momentum wouldn’t cause it to slide into them and kill everyone anyway.

With a hair more time, she could have used portal magic to bypass the innocents entirely, or ported them to safety. More and more time available and the options grew exponentially. She walked slowly towards the survivors forcing herself back to the present, away from the madness of “what if” and “if only”.

Kneeling before the group, she worked to untie them. As she worked she could see them trying to process everything. None thanked her, their lives had come at the expense of another innocent, only one looked to her gratefully between passing glances at the other track. Others closed their eyes to shut out the horrible things that just happened. Some stared at her, daring to judge her for a decision they were unsure if they themselves could make, in the hypocritical way that always stoked her buried feelings of hatred towards humanity.

She tried to suppress the dark, hateful part of her telling her that she should have just let them die, but found herself feeling guilty when she realized to her horror that if the lone human on the other track had been one of her own, she would have.

She finished untying one and turned to the other track leaving them to free each-other. Raya knew consequences might follow, Stormwind might request her extradition for murder, or she might be punished by the conclave for getting involved to begin with. The only consequence she was sure of when she pulled the switch was that she had killed someone that hadn’t deserved it.

Raya had locked eyes with the lone human, they had pleaded with her soundlessly across the distance as she pulled the switch sealing their demise. She had watched refusing to turn away as her actions took their course. She mouthed “I’m sorry” to the crying, pleading, figure, before their prone form was replaced by thundering metal and momentum. She only turned away when the train had passed, its horn of warning fading into the distance.

She was confused at how she felt, sadness was there, the tears on her cheek were testament to that. But what surprised her was the anger. She was angry at fate for putting her in the situation, angry at herself for reducing people to simple math, and angry at the humans for being in the situation in the first place. Whatever she had come her for was no longer important, she spared one more glance at the spot the lone human had been then opened a portal home and stepped through.

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